IN CHRIST, I AM…DEEPLY LOVED BY GOD—Ephesians 3:14-21
(Series on Ephesians: In Christ, I Am…) Read the sermon title from the card.
I suppose you have heard many times about the love of God, in verses like, “God is love,” and John 3:16, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” You are probably familiar with the idea that GOD LOVES YOU.
But how deeply does God’s love penetrate? At the core of your being, are you rooted and grounded in the love of God?
Our house is only a year old, and we have a newly-planted tree in the front yard. It is a beautiful tree, but in late summer last year, it dropped all of its leaves. We figure that it didn’t get enough water, and it couldn’t handle the Texas summer heat. Well, we were delighted this spring to see the tree full of leaves again. We took extra care to soak it with water, but when I dig into the soil, it is bone dry! We give the tree plenty of love, but the tree is on a hill, set in red clay, with hard Texas gumbo below that. Our love doesn’t penetrate deeply enough to handle the stress of Texas heat. So we persist, until our love soaks in deep enough to keep most of the leaves from turning yellow and falling off. Eventually, the tree will become rooted and grounded.
How deeply are you rooted and grounded in the love of God? Is it hard for you to accept God’s love? When you are stressed, or troubled, or discouraged, or tempted, are you grounded in the unshakable love of God? When you fail to live up to your God-given potential, does God’s love give you the strength to try again? When you doubt that anyone could love you, are you secure in knowing that Someone does?
When stress come, it becomes clear how deeply we are grounded in the love of God
Our text begins with, “For this reason…” For what reason? If we read the preceding section, we realize that Paul wrote this from prison. Read Ephesians 3:1, 13.
When life is good, and our prayers are answered as we want, it is easier to believe that God loves us. But when life is in turmoil—when there is disappointment, confusion, or discouragement—we might doubt God’s love.
Stirring the pot brings up parts of us that we don’t know very well, depths of our soul that are hurting, insecure, angry, or alone. Does God’s love penetrate there? Paul is talking about the depths: our “inner being,” our “hearts,” the place where we are “rooted and grounded.” Do we grasp the love of God there? And if we grasp the love of God in our inner being, what impact will it have on us?
HOW DO WE GRASP THE LOVE OF GOD?
It is impossible to truly know love by reading a definition in the dictionary. Love is experienced personally, and God’s love is experienced personally and relationally.
1 John 4:8 says, “God is love.” That is not an abstract statement; it expresses how God relates to people.
God’s love is personal.
In the Bible, the love of God is expressed in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three persons are united in love for each other, and they share a common love for people. Verses 16-17 give a description of how they work together: “…[the Father’s] Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts…” Notice how all three persons of the Trinity are focused on getting God and his love into the depths of us.
The Trinity is a mystery that is beyond the capacity of our minds to comprehend, and it is not our goal today to explain exactly how one God is essentially three persons. Our goal, and Paul’s goal in this text, is more practical: We want to know the love of God as Father, Son (or Christ), and Holy Spirit. It is one love, expressed and made personally real to us in three persons.
GOD LOVES US AS THE FATHER. Read Ephesians 3:14-15.
Mothers and fathers give children a solid foundation of love and security. They provide for their needs, they delight in the uniqueness of each child, they guide their children, and they celebrate their growth and success.
God is the ultimate Father. Parental love was his idea, and when parents love their children, they are reflecting the love of God. Paul says that the whole idea for fatherhood, or family love, originates in the love of God. As Paul says in verse 14, “all family,” or “all fatherhood,” gets its name from God’s fatherhood. (Note to preacher: Translations vary; in Greek, Paul’s usage of patria and pater together suggests a close relationship between family and father.)
Some people have a hard time thinking of God as Father, because their earthly fathers did not give them the love that they needed. Others have an image of father-love which is not really very loving.
Of course, none of us had perfect fathers. Some may have had the impression that the love of their fathers had to be earned—that it was conditioned upon being obedient, or measuring up to an impossible ideal, or making their father proud.
God’s father-love is perfect. His love is pure, faithful, and strong. He provides for his children, he is compassionate and gracious, he disciplines them for their good, and he never gives up on them.
The Old Testament gives several descriptions of how God acted as a father to the people of Israel:
Hosea 11:1-4 “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son...It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.”
Like any good father, God does not let his children run wild: Proverbs 3:12 “the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.”
When his people failed to obey, God’s love was gracious: Psalm 103:8, 13 “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love…As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;”
Jesus revealed the love of God the Father in new ways. He was, of course, the eternal Son of God, and he described their relationship when he said, John 5:20 “The Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.”
Jesus was a man as well as God, and he taught his disciples that they could also call God “Father.” He told them to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father in heaven…” After giving that prayer, he said to his disciples:
Luke 11:11-13 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Then, of course, there is the unimaginable sacrifice of the Father, as he gives his one and only Son, so that we can be adopted as his children: 1 John 4:9 “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”
How does God love you? With the same kind of love that the Father loves his one and only Son.
GOD LOVES US AS THE SON. (Ephesians 3:17-18)
The sacrifice of the Father was matched by the sacrifice of the Son, as Jesus willingly laid down his life for us. As 1 John 3:16 says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.”
Many people struggle, at the core of their being, with a deep sense of unworthiness. Deep down, they feel that if people really knew them, they could not love them. Strangely, some even feel that if God really knew them, he could not love them.
To keep their feelings of unworthiness hidden, some people try to hide their thoughts and feelings, from God, and certainly from other people. They go into a state of denial, or they make excuses, to convince themselves and others that they are really not that bad. Yet the sense of unworthiness persists, resulting in fear, depression, or being hyper-critical of other people.
The good news of God’s love is that he loves unworthy people! The Son loves unworthy people enough to die for them! Romans 5:6, 8 says, “When we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly…God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The Son of God loves people who don’t deserve it!
Christ’s love frees us! We don’t need to pretend we are perfect; he gave his life for imperfect people. We don’t need to give excuses for our sins; Jesus already took care of them on the cross. We don’t have to try to justify ourselves; Jesus makes us righteous in the eyes of the Father.
GOD LOVES US THROUGH THE SPIRIT. (Ephesians 3:16)
Paul says something that is hard to understand: “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power [or strength, ability]…to grasp…the love of Christ.
Why do we need God’s help to grasp the love of God? God’s love is perfect, but our ability to receive his love, to grasp his love, is broken.
At one time, we had a foster child in our home. She was 13 years old, and we tried to love her, as we loved our own children. It was difficult for her to receive our love! Her past experience with being loved was inconsistent and distorted, and she could not grasp how some of the things we did were rooted in love.
When we read the Bible, we learn about the love of God, expressed through the Father and the Son. That should be enough to convince us, beyond any doubt, that God loves us! Yet it is not enough! We can know, in our minds, everything the Bible teaches about God’s love as Father and Son, but it will not penetrate to the depths of who we are, unless God repairs our broken love-receptors.
Because we are broken, God’s Spirit penetrates deeply, to repair our brokenness, so that we can receive his love. Paul says in verse 16, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he [the Father] may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that…you can grasp the [full extent of] the love of Christ.”
We need the Holy Spirit to grasp God’s love, because God’s love goes deeper than knowledge. Paul says the love of Christ is a “love that surpasses knowledge,” which we can only understand as God open our hearts to his love.
The love of God is revealed in the persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God reaches out to us, but we must accept his love.
WHAT CAN WE DO TO RECEIVE GOD’S LOVE?
Read Ephesians 3:19.
From the Bible, we can know about God’s love: how the Father loves, how the Son loves, and how the Spirit loves. but Paul implies that the love of is a “love that surpasses knowledge.” It is experiential: “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
How can we experience the love of God?
PRAY—FOR OURSELVES AND OTHERS.
Paul says, “I pray…” for you. Paul was praying that God would connect with them in love.
At its core, prayer is relational.
Maybe you can remember a time when you wanted to develop a love relationship with a special person. What did you do? You spent time together, you talked and listened, you shared thoughts and activities, hopes and dreams, and frustrations and desires. Love developed in the relationship.
The amazing message of the Bible is that God wants us to know his love. What should we do? Spend time with him, talk and listen, share thoughts, hopes, dreams, frustrations, desires, and everything else. If we pray like that, our love relationship with God will grow.
BELIEVE.
Paul prays that “Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” Faith is key to accepting God’s love.
The Bible tells us about God’s love, and we should believe what it tells us. Faith goes beyond that, however. We need to trust God when he says that he loves us, and we need to accept his love. Then, we need to depend upon his love, as we live with confidence.
1 John 4:13-16 We know that we live in God and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
When we rely on God’s love, we find that his love is real and powerful.
LOVE AS GOD LOVES US.
Paul says that the result of knowing God’s love is to be “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
1 John 4:12 says, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” The best way to see God’s love is to let it flow through us.
Mary was in an abusive relationship with her husband, an over-the-road truck driver. When he was home, he controlled her every move. When he was on the road, the elders of the cult they belonged to used and abused her. Eventually, Mary lost her sanity, and she was admitted to a state mental hospital.
A counselor at the hospital risked his job to tell her about the love of God in Jesus Christ. For the first time in a long time, Mary felt loved. She improved enough to move into a boarding house, which was run by a pastor and his wife.
The couple put flesh on God’s love for Mary, but what made the most impact was how they encouraged her to love others with the love of Christ. She was able to love and serve them and others in the house, and she saw and felt the love of God in tangible ways in herself!
As John said, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” The best way to see God’s love is to let it flow through us.
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How do we know God’s love? The Bible tells us about the love the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We take hold of his love in prayer, trust, and action.
Listen again. Read Ephesians 3:14-19.
(Note to preacher: If you end the service with a benediction, you might want to us Ephesians 3:20-21.)
